Some authors appear on this list a lot. An awful lot. Here is how many I still have to read for some of those repeat offenders.
Phillip Roth = 4
Kurt Vonnegut = 1
Henry James <1 (since I’m reading the final one for him at the moment; fist pump!)
Charles Dickens = 2 (fist pump!)
J.M. Coetzee = 5 (gulp)
Salman Rushdie = 3
Virginia Woolf = 7 (gulp)
Ian McEwan = 3
Kazuo Ishiguro = 2
Margaret Atwood = 3
D.H. Lawrence = 3
Showing posts with label McEwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McEwan. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Read what you know?
When I noticed the title on the list, I was immediately drawn to it. When I read the description of the hostel/boarding house, the May of Teck Club which is the center of the story, I nodded my head in recognition: "The May of Teck Club exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London." Seriously. Just flash forward 66 years and switch the location to DC, and you have me. Well, not really, but still. I loved that description. The young ladies of slender means under 30 in DC should form a club; the best part is, we already have a name!
Anyway, I really enjoyed Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means. It's more a novella than a novel. It's set in London right before and right after the end of WWII, and follows the trials of several residents of the May of Teck Club. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that this was by the same author as Up the Down Staircase, when it really is by the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I don't know why I had that mixed up, though I do tend to associate those two books in my head (I read them right around the same time ages ago in Phoenix; I vividly remember checking them out of the Juniper Branch library; weird). That said, stylistically it is just like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and once I got that confusion out of the way everything started to make sense.
I also recently read Black Dogs by Ian McEwan. If you follow this blog, you know that I adore McEwan, so it should come as no surprise that I loved this one. There is just something so beautiful about the way that he writes. It was also incredibly short, but it's one where you do have to just stop and re-read some passages. Strangely, they part that effected me the most was actually in the prologue when he described leaving his young niece when he went to college.
Like most McEwan's, this novel explores the impact of single moments on people's life trajectories. There's the obvious instance of the black dogs themselves, which shape the whole story the author is telling (and by author, I mean the protagonist who is ostensibly writing a memoir; I know I've complained about that convention in the past, but either a) it works for McEwan or b) I give him an unfair pass, you decide). However, I was also struck by how McEwan contrasted those moments with the moments the characters wanted to make meaningful or telling in their lives. For example, one character wanted the fall of the Berlin Wall to really matter in his life personally and felt a disappointment by the disconnect. I loved those contrasts, between the moments we want to infuse with meaning and the moments that take us by surprise but change everything. But yes, Saturday is still my favorite.
Anyway, I really enjoyed Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means. It's more a novella than a novel. It's set in London right before and right after the end of WWII, and follows the trials of several residents of the May of Teck Club. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that this was by the same author as Up the Down Staircase, when it really is by the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I don't know why I had that mixed up, though I do tend to associate those two books in my head (I read them right around the same time ages ago in Phoenix; I vividly remember checking them out of the Juniper Branch library; weird). That said, stylistically it is just like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and once I got that confusion out of the way everything started to make sense.
I also recently read Black Dogs by Ian McEwan. If you follow this blog, you know that I adore McEwan, so it should come as no surprise that I loved this one. There is just something so beautiful about the way that he writes. It was also incredibly short, but it's one where you do have to just stop and re-read some passages. Strangely, they part that effected me the most was actually in the prologue when he described leaving his young niece when he went to college.
Like most McEwan's, this novel explores the impact of single moments on people's life trajectories. There's the obvious instance of the black dogs themselves, which shape the whole story the author is telling (and by author, I mean the protagonist who is ostensibly writing a memoir; I know I've complained about that convention in the past, but either a) it works for McEwan or b) I give him an unfair pass, you decide). However, I was also struck by how McEwan contrasted those moments with the moments the characters wanted to make meaningful or telling in their lives. For example, one character wanted the fall of the Berlin Wall to really matter in his life personally and felt a disappointment by the disconnect. I loved those contrasts, between the moments we want to infuse with meaning and the moments that take us by surprise but change everything. But yes, Saturday is still my favorite.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
I Can Guess Where This is Going
I can certainly see why comparative lit degrees, programs, classes, etc. exist. It makes sense, really, that using other books can give new insights or bring out aspects or themes that you wouldn’t have noticed taking a work (or genre) on its own. My process for this blog certainly can’t be called systematic or intentional. That said, these random juxtapositions still raise interesting insights. I recently finished Amsterdam and The Light of Day. Aside from superficial commonalities (both are set in London and feature middle-aged men as protagonists), they also both explore the ways that a choice – large, small, impulsive, planned – can have profound impacts, be irrevocable, and reverberate in unexpected and at times tragic ways.
Amsterdam is not my favorite McEwan (I’d probably rate them Saturday, Enduring Love, Atonement, Amsterdam, in all honesty). While it still had the beauty of his style, there were no moments that took my breath away. At one point everything seemed to crystallize and have this clarity – beautiful but so tragic – that I love about McEwan’s works, but the end felt hallow to me for some reason.
The story focuses on the friendship of two men, a friendship based in experiences from their past/youth that has endured but is more brittle than they believe. Each man makes a terrible, self-centered choice which the other condemns, and which set them up for possible self-destruction and destruction of their friendship. I think part of the problem for me was that the character of Molly, a former lover to both who dies at the start of the story and is meant as the catalyst for the novel in more ways than one, never seemed sufficiently real to me. She needed to be amazing and a powerful force, and she wasn’t.
The Light of Day has earned a place on the list of books that make me glad I am doing this project: that I would never have read otherwise, but that are just so wonderful and beautiful. It likely will make the top 10 for 2011. There were so many passages that I need to write down somewhere. Just these beautiful, tragic, insightful and incising passages.
I think it would make a wonderful book to assign papers on, since there are so many different topics; the book is extremely rich. From symbolism – the role of flowers, smiles, light – to themes/motifs – what does it mean to create a home, people’s relationships with food and the process of creating food, the role of language and words, how different characters say good-bye – to the characters themselves, you could go in so many different directions. I am particularly interested in the role of chance and coincidence in the story, coupled with its exploration of how global events like the war in Bosnia shape personal tragedies.
The book would also make an interesting read in conjunction with Crime and Punishment, exploring questions about redemption, the ways murder shapes and changes people, and whether people lose their humanness or part of their humanness when they kill another human and if they can come back from that.
Of course, I shall never assign these paper topics since I would be incredibly surprised to find myself ever teaching lit (the only reason to want to teach lit is to force people to write papers on topics that interest me, which is a bad reason to teach lit, rather like how it would be a bad reason to have a child just so that she could do competitive jump rope; on the other hand, though, competitive jump rope is amazing).
Amsterdam is not my favorite McEwan (I’d probably rate them Saturday, Enduring Love, Atonement, Amsterdam, in all honesty). While it still had the beauty of his style, there were no moments that took my breath away. At one point everything seemed to crystallize and have this clarity – beautiful but so tragic – that I love about McEwan’s works, but the end felt hallow to me for some reason.
The story focuses on the friendship of two men, a friendship based in experiences from their past/youth that has endured but is more brittle than they believe. Each man makes a terrible, self-centered choice which the other condemns, and which set them up for possible self-destruction and destruction of their friendship. I think part of the problem for me was that the character of Molly, a former lover to both who dies at the start of the story and is meant as the catalyst for the novel in more ways than one, never seemed sufficiently real to me. She needed to be amazing and a powerful force, and she wasn’t.
The Light of Day has earned a place on the list of books that make me glad I am doing this project: that I would never have read otherwise, but that are just so wonderful and beautiful. It likely will make the top 10 for 2011. There were so many passages that I need to write down somewhere. Just these beautiful, tragic, insightful and incising passages.
I think it would make a wonderful book to assign papers on, since there are so many different topics; the book is extremely rich. From symbolism – the role of flowers, smiles, light – to themes/motifs – what does it mean to create a home, people’s relationships with food and the process of creating food, the role of language and words, how different characters say good-bye – to the characters themselves, you could go in so many different directions. I am particularly interested in the role of chance and coincidence in the story, coupled with its exploration of how global events like the war in Bosnia shape personal tragedies.
The book would also make an interesting read in conjunction with Crime and Punishment, exploring questions about redemption, the ways murder shapes and changes people, and whether people lose their humanness or part of their humanness when they kill another human and if they can come back from that.
Of course, I shall never assign these paper topics since I would be incredibly surprised to find myself ever teaching lit (the only reason to want to teach lit is to force people to write papers on topics that interest me, which is a bad reason to teach lit, rather like how it would be a bad reason to have a child just so that she could do competitive jump rope; on the other hand, though, competitive jump rope is amazing).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)